Printer Friendly
Email to a Friend
Enlarge Font
Decrease Font
Then he goes to work at the very company he's demonstrating against.
For the past month, Costine has waged a one-man protest against IBM, his employer for 25 years. He says Big Blue is trying to force longtime workers like him off the payroll and out of future benefits by giving them unfairly negative performance reviews.
"They're basically doing whatever they can to drive me out of the business," said Costine, 51.
Addressing Costine's specific claims would violate his privacy, IBM spokeswoman Alise McNeill said, adding that his broader statements of bias against older workers are false.
"That's absolutely not true," she said. "IBM stands by its long record of being an equal-opportunity employer with an incredibly diverse work force."
Costine is one disgruntled worker among IBM's thousands of Triangle employees, she said.
"IBM has 11,000 employees at this site, and one person is not a protest," McNeill said.
Still, on weekday mornings since March 8, Costine has stationed himself at the intersection of Cornwallis Road and Davis Drive across from IBM's entrance. Typically, he arrives at 8 a.m., parks at a nearby bus stop and walks to the entrance. At 9:30 a.m., he walks back to his car and goes to work in the company's integrated supply-chain division.
On Tuesday, holding two signs on a 9-foot pole and wearing another two-sided sign around his neck, Costine battled gusty winds that caught the posterboard like sails. When drivers heading into IBM's campus honked their horns in support, he raised a fist.
Every Monday, Costine switches the messages on his signs. This week, one sign encourages workers to contact Alliance at IBM, a union that is attempting to organize IBM employees. Costine joined the New York-based group more than a year ago and became an organizer in February.
Two signs target performance reviews, and another reads: "Got some time, join me here, have a voice." No one has taken Costine up on his invitation, although recently he has received more thumbs-up and horn honks from his colleagues as they report to work.
"There's really a climate of fear," he said. "Everyone's afraid to come out for fear of losing their jobs, for getting pegged for that."
McNeill says IBM encourages employees to discuss business- related issues in forums and blogs.
Claims of age discrimination at IBM aren't new. Employees have filed lawsuits against the company alleging age bias for more than a decade. Many of those cases have been settled or dismissed.
But changes in IBM's pension plan in 1999 and twice more over the past seven years have brought renewed criticism of the company from some employees.
While some veteran workers such as Costine have been grandfathered into IBM's traditional pension plan, which provides a fixed payment for employees after retirement, most have been switched to riskier 401(k) plans and similar investment vehicles. The courts are split on whether the pension plan conversions count as age discrimination. IBM reached a $320 million partial settlement with 140,000 workers in 2004.
Costine claims that to drive him away, his manager reported in his most recent performance evaluation that he doesn't complete his work quickly enough. He is part of a communications chain that passes along customers' orders for laptop and desktop computers to the sites where they will be built.
Costine said his work environment has turned hostile since he began protesting and became an organizer for the union, with his manager holding him to different performance standards than his colleagues and assigning him an "impossible" workload in a co-worker's absence.
IBM can't address the claims, McNeill said.
Even though Costine worries that the protests may be putting his career at risk, he says his overwhelming emotion is one of relief. He plans to continue the protests for a year. "This is the best time I've ever had at IBM," he said. "I'm just enjoying being out here and making my statement. I get to be heard now."
